Forum Moderators: martinibuster
So frustrating.
One good thing - our big guys on this board still earning high. That could mean - my site is sh!t.
I need to make it better.
But I AM tired.
Just going to virtual reality ( Unreal tournament 2004 ) for next couple hours to rethink everything in my policy.
Friday for instance there was a big change with 1/2 the channels switching to multi-dollar all at once.
The only way to get around this is to have different topics therefore different advertisers and that will smooth out the cycles somewhat. From my exp anyway.
Today I'm getting off target ads on one of my main channels and hope it works out by Monday.
Though you can, perhaps, optimize the content on your site towards high-paying words and away from low-paying ones, you can't control what you are paid completely.
Focus on what you can control--more traffic, more pages with AdSense and a decent CTR, better ad placements.
Last year my site, which had hit $300/month before smart pricing, went into a gradual decline and hit $136 for September. I've made a number of small changes and am back up at $300, and think I've learned enough to climb on beyond that level. Not much money, I know, but a good income for my small site, and it shows that you can bring your income back up. You just have to stay in it for the long term.
Good luck!
I made some changes now, created a new small websites on topic Mesothelioma. Then derived visitors from my high traffic sites, and guess what, when i checked the stats today it was more than 90 cents per click average , other websites 3 cents click are also included in this average, i think my new website is paying me multiple dollars per click.
From the beginning, I've had a mix of both kinds of ads (for the most part--a few topics too). Visitors to my site are clearly interested in both, even if what brought them to the site was wanting information about "crafting widgets." So they click on both. And from what I can tell, the "business widgets" ads are worth easily 10 times what they "crafting widgets" ads are worth.
So, diversify within your topic. Can you add material that broadens the focus--puts your topic in a wider context? That narrows the focus--that breaks it down into smaller areas? That moves the focus to the side, to bring in related areas?
(I'm assuming you've also done all you can with ad placement, etc.)
It may also be the case that there are just going to be limits to the revenue that one can squeeze out of a site.
It's good to keep things in perspective.
Great site!
Not just on a couple channels, but over a myriad of topics. I've never before seen clicks all report the same amount over many channels, as most of these channels usually range from .50 - $2 clicks.
I can see how frustrated people are now with the sudden dips in cpc. I also don't see how advertisers all at the same time decided to lower their cpc to .05 over a very wide range of topics... G must be taking some 90-98% today.
I think google is constantly messing with the ads. My case today was just the opposite - 1st 6 hours were so bad in terms of EPC on so many channels that I was forced to turn off a few marginal compaigns in adwords.. Then at about the 9th hour there was a complete turnaround. I should be used to these swings by now but I'm not.
G must be taking some 90-98% today.
That's not how smart pricing works. Regardless of the value of a click as determined by smart pricing. Google's share stays the same.
Or it's supposed to. But if Google were keeping such a large share of the AdWords earnings from the content network (us), instead of the 23% or so they claim, with us getting 77%, there'd be more evidence.
Declining click value is just declining click value.
If all the publishers started running only 1 ad block per page, wonder if that would do much?
Check your second ad block via channels. If it's not earning you anything, go ahead and pull it. But if it is performing not MUCH worse than the 1st ad block....
I don't know how to post a quote on this board yet, I just joined a couple months ago and I'm slow when it comes to instructions.
Anyway, as soon as I heard about smart pricing, I almost did the same thing myself, and I've never "advertised" on the net. I thought about taking those 5 cent clicks.
Advertisers are indeed swiping up those 5 cent clicks, lots of them! You gotta pay attn. to what's going on.
If I have a higher CTR it won't make my clicks more valuable, will it?
If I don't make x amount a month, it is not worth it to me to lose visitors when they click on ads that I don't make anything on. Last month I didn't make the min. I need to.
I stil have another 30k a month of ads I can remove. I'll wait a couple of weeks to see if things improve. It's just a dram of ads for (G), but there is a limited number of advertisers that display ads on my site, and they should feel it right away.
Or that Adsense simply looks kindly upon frequent changes of ANY kind ;)
In the meantime, I'm setting up other businesses that I thought I never had to set up because big brother Google was around.
One of the members which uses adwords almost exclusively to promote aff products posted the following:
"I've discovered something interesting today. I've lowered my bids to the
minimum on Adwords, and I am still getting as much if not more
traffic as when I was bidding 3 or 4 times as much. If I can get as
many sales, maybe I could start making a profit again."
I found his post very interesting. May explain the continued decline some are experiencing. I wonder if other adwords advertisers noticed something similar .
